Life. Liberty. Pursuit of Our Next Beer.

Belmont: A Local’s Experience

Last weekend was the running of the Belmont Stakes. People from all over come in droves to dress like bougie ass turds with hopes of winning the big bucks. But for the true degenerates who live within a 20 minute radius of the famed horse track, the Stakes is the day to stay the fuck away.

Today, I will be speeding home from work, picking up a 30 of BL’s and Styrofoam cooler, and making my way to Belmont Racetrack in beautiful Elmont, New York. Why? Well, you see, last Friday, the day before Stakes, marked the first Party In The Park Series (or as the locals call it “Twilight”) of the season. Twilight features twilight racing until 7 o’clock and a local NYC/Long Island cover band usually doing Billy Joel, Springsteen, or just 80’s/90’s hits. These Parties in the Park are one of the finest spectacles of scum bag-ness I’ve ever taken part of. The crowd consists of a very diverse group – 16-50+ year old Irish people getting absolutely shit cocked.

Now, whenever you have a crowd drunk people, craziness is bound to happen. But because Twilight only happens on the 5 Friday’s of June, the craziness is intensified because people are just fucking hyped as shit for the beginning of summer. The high school kids are out there playing out the most memorable summers of their lives. College kids are back home reuniting with their friends, and trying their best to get after it. And then everyone else is drowning out the work week from their memories with absurd amounts of booze. People are losing money left and right on ponies. Dudes are hyped up on testosterone and beer, getting the first whiffs of summer love. Girls are getting together with their besties to get lit yaaaaaas betch yasssssss. And with some tool singing Only The Good Die Young in the background. The whole scene is a recipe for a beautiful disaster.

For just $5 you can walk into the scenic Belmont Park with a cooler filled with your favorite canned beer and couple of sandwiches. Find a nice shady spot under a tree, sit back, relax, and continue to black the fuck out as you wait for the night’s band to come on. The amount of times I’ve been to the track without actually one goddamn horse is laughable. Or, you can take the opposite route, go right up to betting booth, become stressed out as fuck, lose all your money, then black out. The choice is yours.

Now maybe you forgot a cooler, that’s totally ok. I’ve witnessed tons of kids walking around with nothing but Natty 12 packs, and it is absolutely acceptable. In fact encouraged! Maybe your not much a drinker but more of a stoner? No problemo! People are smoking pot everywhere. Find a spot high enough in the grand stand you can probably smoke a blunt with Belmont employees.

What I’m trying to get at here is that there are really no rules. The only rule I know of is don’t rumple/throw beers during a bands encore of “Girls, Girls, Girls”. – because you WILL get kicked out for that.

So please, if your in the area on a Friday afternoon in June – come on down to Belmont Racetrack.